Accenture · public installation · Riga, 2022
A public swing set that makes its own electricity and charges your phone. You have to put the phone down.
Accenture turned twenty and wanted to give the city something rather than throw itself a party. So: a swing set that harvests electricity from the swinging and hands some of it back to your phone.
You have to put the phone down to charge it.
01
The whole structure was built in Blender first. Frame geometry, pulley stack, seat height, the light throw on the ground. I use 3D the same way I now use AI prototypes: make the unknown visible early, while changing it is still cheap. Nothing was cut until it worked on screen.
02
Pulleys and belts turn the swinging into a spinning flywheel. The flywheel makes the power and doubles as a speed gauge, projecting a light pattern onto the ground that moves faster the harder you swing. Solar panels on the top of the beam keep it charging when nobody is on it.
03
Technical design and execution by Rihards Skrubis and Krišjānis Zariņš of MakeRiga. The build is where a concept like this usually dies. It didn't.
04
Opening day was 14 July 2022. The rainbow was not in the brief.
The swings stood at AB Dambis through the summer of 2022, free to use. Jauns.TV sent a reporter to check whether it really charges a phone. And Edgars Rinkēvičs, foreign minister then, President since 2023, posted a good morning from the waterfront with the swings in the picture.
Very good morning from #Riga #Latvia, have a great Friday!
